-
13th Amendment
The 13th Amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery and forced servitude. The Constitution has previously protected slavery through clauses such as the Three-Fifths Compromise, but even after the ratification of this amendment, white supremacist groups and black codes led to the continued unfair treatment of African-Americans. -
14th Amendment
The 14th Amendment granted citizenship to all people born in the United States, forbids states from denying a person life, liberty, and property without due process of the law, and guaruntees equal protection of the laws. The southern states contested this amendment but were forced to ratify it in order to regain representation in Congress. -
15th Amendment
The 15th Amendment prohibits the govenment from denying an individual the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Ulysses S. Grant would eventually convince the majority of republicans that protecting Blacks' right to vote was important for the future of the party. -
Poll Taxes
Poll taxes was a prerequisite payment to the registration for voting in some states. After the right to vote was extended to all races by the Fifteenth Amendment, some states wanted to put restrictions on voting rights by preventing African-Americans and Native Americans to vote, The laws often contained a grandfather clause, which allowed any adult male whose father or grandfather voted prior to the abolition of slavery to vote for free. -
Literacy Tests
Literacy tests refer to the state government practices of administering tests to prospective voters. They were truly given to deprive Blacks of the right to vote. The tests were usually administered orally by white local officials, who had complete discretion over who passed and who failed and did not ask questions that would accurately judge one's literacy. They often asked extremely unfair questions. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
This landmark United States Supreme Court decision upholds the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine "separate but equal." It stemmed from the fact that Homer Plessy was jailed for sitting in the "White" car of the East Louisiana Railroad. He was a black man, but simply had a light complexion. -
19th Amendment
This Amendment prohibits any U.S. citizen from being denied the right to vote based on sex. This legislation was the result of the women's suffrage movement in the Unites States, which fought at both the state and national levels. -
Korematsu v. United States
President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, granting the U.S. military the power to ban tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry from areas deemed critical to domestic security. In Korematsu's case, the Court accepted the U.S. military's argument that the loyalties of some Japanese Americans resided not with the United States but with their ancestral country. -
Sweatt v. Painter
This was a U.S. Supreme Court case that successfully challenged the "separate but equal" doctrine established by Plessy v. Ferguson. The case involves a black man who was denied admission to the School of Law at the University of Texas on the grouds that their state constitution prohibited integrated education. It would be influential in the Brown v. Board of Education case four years later. -
Brown v. Board of Education
This was another landmark Supreme Court case that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. The 9-0 decision claimed that "separate education facilities are inherently unequal." This ruling paves the way for integration and was a huge piece of the civil rights movement. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
This was a political and social protest campaign that opposed the segregation policy on public transit in Alabama. It began when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat for a white person. Whites were supposed to sit up front and Blacks were supposed to fill the rows in the back of the bus, and if there were no seats left but a white person came onto the bus, a Black was to surrender their seat. Parks, however, did not do so, and now she is a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement. -
Affirmative Action
Affirmative action was introduced by John F. Kennedy in 1961 as a method of dealing with discrimination that had persisted in spite of civil rights laws and constitutional guaruntees. It is the policy of favoring members of a disadvantaged group who are perceived to suffer from discrimination within a culture. Reverse discrimination would later become an issue as seen in the Bakke case. -
24th Amendment
The 24th Amendment prohibits a poll tax from being put in place for voters in federal electios. Southern states of the former Confederacy adopted these taxes as a measure to prevent African Americans and poor whites from voting. Even after this was passed, five states still had poll taxes, and it wasnt until 1966 that they were ruled unconstitutional for any level of elections. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
This act outlawed discrimination in the United States based on race, color, sex, religion, or national origin. It ended unequal application of voter registration as well as segregation in schools and the workplace.The Act was signed into law by president Lyndon B. Johnson and powers to enforce the act were intially weak, but this was fixed years later. -
Jim Crow Laws
These racial segregation laws within public facilities were still prevalent until around 1965. They mandated the segregation of public schools, transportation, restrooms, restaurants, and drinking fountains. They held that Whites and Blacks were "separate but equal." -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
This Act prohibits racial discrimination in voting and was desgined to enforce the voting rights spelled out in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. It contains numerous provisions that regulate the administration of elections as well as outlaws literacy tests. It is considered to be the most effective piece of civil rights legislation ever put into place in the U.S. -
Robert Kennedy Speech In Indy Upon MLK Death
Kennedy had been campaigning to earn the Democratic presidential nominaton when he learned that Martin Luther King Jr. had been assasinated in Memphis. After visiting Ball State and the University of Notre Dame previously that day, he was boarding a plane for Indy when he heard the news. Upon arrival, Kennedy delivered an emotional cry for peace and his speech is considered one of the greatest of the modern era. -
Reed v. Reed
This was an equal protection case in which the Supreme Court ruled that the administrators of estates cannot be named in a way that discriminates aginast the sexes. The case involved a married couple who had been separated and were in conflict over who was to be desginated as the administrator of their deceased son's estate. -
Equal Rights Amendment
This was a proposed amendment to the Constitution designed to guaruntee equal rights for women. It was written by Alice Paul, who argued that the Nineteenth Amendment alone would not end discrimination based upon sex. The National Woman's Party supported this amendment and were willing to sacrifice certain benefits given to women such as shorter work hours. -
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
This case upheld affirmative action, allowing race to be one of several admission factors in the college admission process. However, it was decided that specific quotas set aside for minority students would not be allowed. Proponents believed these stipulations were necessary to make up for past discrmination, but opponents saw a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. -
Bowers v. Hardwick
This decision, overturned in 2003, upheld the constitutionality of a Georgia sodomy law criminalizing oral and anal sex in private between homosexuals. The majority opinion argued that the Constitution does not bestow "a fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy." -
Americans with Disabilities Act
This Act, signed in to law by George H. W, Bush, prohibits discrimination based on disability. It requires employers to provide special accomodations to employees with disabilities and imposes accesibility requirements on public accomodations. ADA disabilities include both mental and physical medical conditions and a condition does not need to be severe or permanent to be a disability. -
Lawrence v. Texas
This 6-3 ruling struck down the sodomy law in Texas and 13 other states. It made same-sex sexual activity legal in every U.S. state and territory. The outcome was celebrated by gay rights activists who hoped that further legal advances might result. -
Fisher v. Texas
In 1997, the Texas legislature enacted a law requiring the University of Texas to admit all high school seniors who ranked in the top ten percent of their high school classes. A Caucasian female applied for undergraduate admissinon but was not in the top ten percent of her class so she competed with others in her same position. She later argued that less qualified students were being admitted over her so the university could have more diversity. She lost the case. -
Gay Marriage in Indiana
The state had previously restricted marraige to male-female couples by statute in 1986, but now same-sex marraiage is legally recognized. A ruling in Bowling v. Pence stated that the state must recognize same-sex marriages performed out-of-state and the decision was stayed until the Circuit ruled on the merits in similar cases.
